AlliterAsian (16 page)

“That's only temporary. You'll have a better job when you improve your English.”

Lao Yang stood up. “Stop talking about English! I'm too old to learn English!” He stomped off to the bedroom and slammed the door.

Looking at her mother, Linda said, “You and Baba shouldn't have talked about this at the dinner table. I don't feel like eating now.”

“Sorry,” Mei said regretfully. “I don't feel like eating now either. If you want to have dinner later, ask your Baba to have it with you. I'll go to the library now and will be back late.”

All the untouched dishes were left on the table: vegetable stir-fry, shrimp, tofu stewed with pork, and three bowls of rice. Linda covered everything with plastic wrap.

After that Valentine's Day, or what he thought of as the Qinrenjie disaster, Lao Yang left his wife and daughter for the hometown he had been longing to return to. He had worked in the cafeteria for a year and a half. He had gone to Elaine for English lessons two hours a week. She had taught him enough English to work well as a kitchen helper.

But after struggling for two years with the choice between studying English and going back to China, he chose China. Before the Chinese Spring Festival, he left his wife and daughter for the
hometown he had been longing to return to for two years.

Two months after leaving, he phoned his wife. Without even greeting Mei, he said, “I want to come back to Canada next month.”

“Why?”

“I miss you and Linda.”

“We'll go back this summer to visit you and the family.”

“I still want to come back,” Lao Yang stated, a hint of desperation and despondence in his voice.

Looking out of his condominium window in Dalian, he saw the public square full of young people, laughing and playing in the morning sun. He held the phone close to his ear, walked to the dresser, and sat in front of the mirror. In flannel pyjamas far too loose for his small body, he saw in his reflection the abundance of white hair on the sides of his head. White hair that had not been there months ago.

“Mei,” he said, looking at the mirror. “I'm too old to find a job in China.”

Mei did not answer.

“Mei?” Lao Yang said loudly. “Can you hear me?”

There was no answer. Just silence.

“Mei?” Lao Yang said. “Can you hear me?”

       
A
UTHOR
C
OMMENTARY

For the past ten years, I have taught literature and culture in Canadian and Chinese universities, and I always find myself trapped in “mainstream” literature and culture. I once included works by Amy Tan and Maxine Hong Kingston, only to realize that the Chinese culture reflected in their works was too traditional to reflect today's immigrants to North America. As a new immigrant, with my own experience of cultural orientation, adaptation,
assimilation, and, finally, accommodation, I started writing fiction about Chinese immigrants. “Lao Yang,” part of a trilogy, is the story of a former engineer who takes on all kinds of menial jobs to survive and finds himself returning to his home country. By writing about Chinese immigrants, I have enhanced my knowledge and sensitivity to Chinese and Western cultural traditions and practices, while hoping to move Asian-Canadian literature and culture from the margins to the mainstream. —
Ying Kong, 2015

       
A
BOUT THE
A
UTHOR

Ying Kong is a Chinese-Canadian currently teaching Chinese culture and literature at the University of Winnipeg. Before coming to Canada, she was a professor of English in a Chinese university. After obtaining her PhD in literature at the University of Manitoba, she travelled and taught for universities in China and Canada. She has published three pieces in
Prairie Fire
. “You Can't Go Home Again” was recognized in 2008 as one of the best creative nonfiction pieces on the theme of home.

Lucky in Saigon (novel excerpt)

Ricepaper
18, no. 4 (2013)

Yasuko Thanh

Chapter 1

Georges Minh thinks:
Killing a man is easy. Life is fragile, for one. And the world is poisonous, for two. How poisonous? Cobras, mushrooms, stonefish, apple seeds. Consider the datura plant
. Datura stramonium.
White flowers the shape of a trumpet and the size of a human heart. The seeds, crushed with a mortar and pestle, are easily processed. Thieves and prostitutes favour its killing properties. He's seen the results in his practice and has such a flower blooming in his courtyard
.

Six men plotted in a circle, cross-legged, on Georges Minh's bed. Six men, none of them yet thirty-five. Six men on Georges Minh's command centre, where he ate, slept, played cards, and officiated the weekly nationalist meetings.

Carved out of the rarest red wood, with no mattress in the Chinese style, Georges Minh's bed took up half his bedroom.

“Mysterious Scent of the Mountains,” said Khieu, who owned an inn with his wife and spent his spare time painting poetry on to the inside of rice paper sun hats.
Had it not been for winter, the falling snow might have been cherry blossoms
. One day he would close the inn and just sell the hats whose words could be read only when they were raised to the rays of the sun.

Khieu wore the same type of linen suit as Georges Minh except that Georges Minh's was ironed. Khieu's knees sloped in the linen pants, and the collar of his white shirt, where it met the dark line of his unshaven stubble, was wrinkled as the rings of a pineapple tree.

Smaller than Georges Minh with a thin mouth and powdered hair, he sat to Georges Minh's right, so close their knees touched. Georges Minh thought Khieu's swimming irises appeared somewhat lecherous.

“No, no, no. I still like Fighting Dragon,” said the engineer, who flirted with laziness. He was slightly walleyed and laughed so his belly moved.

Long looked at the back of his hand, examined his nails. “Or, like I said before, we can make a poison.”

“How's your brood, Khieu?” Georges Minh asked.

“I don't know.”

“You don't know?” Georges Minh stared at Khieu's thick betel-nut-coloured hands rolling a cigarette, shielding the tobacco from the wind of a small oscillating fan.

“Haven't seen her in a year. Didn't you know?”

“Mysterious Scent of the …
whatever
is … too … too, too …” the engineer waved his tea cup, trying to catch the right word. “It sounds like something from a song. We're a revolutionary organization—not a
minstrel
group.”

The French-style villa was distanced from the neighbouring houses by a property considered expansive, even for the Thao Dien area, and guarded by the noise of the river out back.

“Not even the kids?” Mostly they kept their private affairs private. Still the revelation shocked Georges Minh because Khieu had been married to his wife for seven years; they had four children together.

“Nope, but, I suppose that's how it goes sometimes,” Khieu said. Georges Minh thought of Mai, whom he'd met once or twice, running the inn alone. “Oh, well, these things happen.” Like a storm that washed your memory of a family the way a rain washed a road in a sudden burst? Or did they happen the way a thief with a bludgeon attacked a family leaving death in his wake?

Georges Minh looked down at his cards as if it was his hand that troubled him.

“How many soldiers can there be?”

“Thirty or forty?”

“I heard fifty,” said Khieu.

“You're both wrong. The exact number is eighty.”

“Do you know nothing? They number over two hundred!”

“We will drive out the French bandits.”

“We will restore Vietnam.”

“We will create a democratic republic.”

“No, a monarchy.”

Their hearts were in the right places, these members of the MFYM, Mysterious Fragrance of the Yellow Mountains, who didn't yet have a name, in spite of the fact that most of their meetings were spent drinking and playing cards. They discussed lofty ideals. Drank.

Outlined what a free and democratic Vietnam would look like. Drank. Compared international political systems. Drank. Cited historical precedents. Cursed the French.

Each man held some playing cards and a glass of mulberry wine. They were tea cups, not wine glasses, and none of them matched, but Georges Minh liked to be thought above the man who cared about such trifling matters and superficial details. He could have
afforded matching wine glasses, but only shallow men cared about such worldly things.

“If we can't agree, let's move on,” suggested the horticulturalist who raised moonflowers for an exclusive clientele. “Let's talk about what we're actually here for, as our esteemed colleague Long suggested earlier, when he brought up a rather interesting idea. Why don't we talk about that?”

Long was the son of the Junior Minister of the Annamese Cabinet of Cochinchina. “And High Class Resident of Saigon,” Long would smirk and say, even as a teenager. Though the Le family was powerful, the power parroted the French establishment, and the Le family knew it and flaunted their wealth, as if that could repair the insult. The two had known each other since grade school. Long and Georges Minh, who were best friends. Long, whose family's power fecundated Saigon's alleys and open sewers and jackfruit trees and feral animal population.

Long hated the sell-out, the collaboration of his family with the enemy that included his name, “Henri,” but he stopped short of hating the urchins who called to him across the alleyways of Cho-lon: “Hon-riii, Hon-riii, give us a tai-an, give us your tie,” who worshipped anything French, giving themselves French nicknames for fun.

“Chosen well, a good name helps define a group's beliefs, bestows desired traits,” Georges Minh said, because Long was the kind of person who as a child had given away his pencils and schoolbooks to those same urchins, and now sat with a cracked tea cup of wine in his hand goading him. Georges Minh shrugged his shoulders. “Look at all the fuss and divination that goes into choosing a child's name.” Georges Minh would go to as much trouble when he named his son. When he had a son. When he found a woman. When he got
married. Which he would. Any day now.

“Not a
monarchy
, a republic,” Khieu said. “Haven't you read Rousseau?”

“They should die like dogs.”

“They should die like a snake under a rickshaw driver's wheels.”

“They should die like an iguana in the mouth of a hungry dog, swelling at head and tail until they burst under the pressure of his powerful jaws.”

“They can die like a lover in the arms of a woman,” Khieu said. “I don't care. So long as they die.”

Making a poison strong enough to kill a man is easy. Remove the seeds from the stamen. Crush them with a mortar and pestle until the dry seeds stop crackling. The powder is now so fine as to be invisible and weightless. Season chicken, shrimp, or buffalo with the dust. Steeped in fish sauce, the poison is tasteless
.

Because he was a little drunk, Georges Minh fell against Khieu. He righted himself and dabbed at the spilled wine on the wooden bed slat with his thumb. “I don't mind talking about the group name some more. A thing becomes its name and vice versa. Can you imagine a militant group with the word ‘bananas' in its moniker?”

“Bananas is definitely out.”

“I second.”

“Third.”

“Obviously.”

“This is absurd.”

“What was that name you said? Mysterious perfume …”

“Mysterious smell.”

“Fragrance.”

“No, it was mysterious scent, but I like perfume better.”

“Me too.”

“Perfume then,” said the court translator and lover of books, “but mysterious is the important part, because it's how we must remain. Elusive. As in impossible to catch. By soldiers, police, any and all enemies.”

“Well, perfumes are important, too,” said the horticulturalist, who would have said such a thing.

“Sweet, right, because
that's
what we want to be,” the engineer said, facetiously.

“Maybe you're not that much of a block head,” said the translator. “Sweet as a flower that rises in the spring. In the spring there's hope. Especially in the north.”

“Where at present,” said Georges Minh, striking a serious face, “the news is one in three women are now prostitutes, because of the regime. Did you know they're starving in Tonkin? Picking individual grains of fallen rice from between stones with their fingers. Eating farm animals dead of disease.”

The men sympathised with silent nods. “Invisible as a fragrance, invisible as hope, invisible as a guerrilla fighter.” The court translator continued, “Mountains, of course are a symbol of strength. Where were we then, mountains?”

“Don't forget, prayers are invisible, too,” said the pipa player.

“True,” said Georges Minh.

“Like the fart I just let out?” the pipa player said.

“God.” The horticulturalist groaned.

Long took a sip of his wine, then drained the cup avoiding the chip on the rim. After lighting a cigarette he said, “If we're not going to move on to the poison until after we choose a name then I say let's add ‘yellow,' Mysterious Perfume of the Yellow Mountains. Makes us sound like poetry.”

Was Long playing it straight with the group? Yellow? Georges
Minh couldn't tell much about the man these days. Long had accompanied his father on business trips to the Dutch East Indies, France, and Switzerland when his father had still thought Long might be sane enough to follow in his footsteps and enter the cabinet himself. But Long had recently started growing his hair long again, like some of the Hindu holy men in the marketplace. Long had discarded his topknot and traditional turban in favour of clipped hair long ago, but now he no longer kept it sleek, no longer washed it. He wore his hair unkempt and ran around the marketplace pushing a broom or borrowing rickshaws that didn't belong to him. This, in itself, wasn't completely new. But he'd changed since the hauling of those French contraptions of horror into the square, the guillotines.

Georges Minh hated the French—he could say those words. But could he write someone's name in poison? Georges Minh didn't know if he could kill a man. Maybe one man. But could he poison a whole garrison?
Poison
. Long's words of earlier hung in the air along with Long's cigarette smoke waiting for Georges Minh's response. The truth was, ever since that day as a schoolboy, when Long with his one green eye that emphasized his craziness had stood nearly naked in the marketplace in Cho-lon, Georges Minh had admired him because he was everything Georges Minh was incapable of being by nature, lacking the inner rigour. A few years later, as a teenager, when Long stole a driver's rickshaw one afternoon and pretended he was a coolie, returning the rickshaw and all his earnings to the rightful owner that evening, Georges Minh had wanted to be him. Long, who had a neck as solid as an Iron Wood tree, was strong. Even now, as an adult, when he returned to Cho-lon and swept the streets with a broom or collected garbage, barefoot as a peasant, for the love of work, or to prove a political point—Georges Minh wasn't exactly sure—everyone knew him by name. Now Long
was looking at him, and Georges Minh could feel whatever small admiration he'd built up for himself in Long's eyes over the years slipping away by degrees like a small village slipping down a waterlogged hillside during the monsoon rains. Long, looking again with that provocation in his eyes. Georges Minh decided the look was Long's way of mocking him, for being weaker than him, teasing him for his reluctance to get involved. Provoke him into being more than the wimp he always was. Making a stand.

Long still loved mathematics, detective novels, and astronomy, searching with his telescope for alien life in the skies, but another part of him had evolved into something Georges Minh no longer recognized after hearing men screech nationalist slogans, watching the blade fall, heads tumbling into baskets. The heads were then collected and mounted onto spikes as warnings to others, with punishments distributed to Vietnamese who tried to remove the heads too soon. Even as he sat there now, with Long waiting for his response: Would he or would he not make a poison to kill the soldiers stationed at the French garrison of Saigon? He knew he was disappointing his friend. And his country by extension. He was the natural choice. The doctor of the group.

Georges Minh looked out the window. Subterfuge. An irrational ploy. Smile and no one will bother you. Look away and what you don't want to see turns invisible. Gazing at the river that flowed out back. Now the shade of a ball bearing. Now the shade of dirty cotton. Now the shade of belly button lint. He could pretend the river was something fleeting. A minnow, a swordfish, a dragon. Then the dreaded thing happened. It must. It had to.

“Yes, of course. He could make the poison.”

“Naturally, he's a doctor.”

“What do you say?”

“Georges Minh?”

“Aren't you listening?”

“He's drunk.”

“Could you or couldn't you?”

“Daydreaming.”

“No, I was paying attention. Poison.”

“Well?”

“There are many ways to poison a man.”

Could you?

Georges Minh stared into Long's one green eye and didn't answer. Mulberry wine made all the fish in the near dark leap out of the river and hover over the water.

They spun and danced, a synchronized ripple, the way the water puppets shimmer and perform boisterous art over
Song Saigon
currents. Fish galloped through the air—Georges Minh had witnessed his first miracle.

An excerpt from
Mysterious Fragrance of the Yellow Mountains,
to be published in Canada by Penguin in 2016
.